Friday, May 7, 2010

Not for the fainthearted

I'm now at home, after returning from Chi Phat this afternoon. We arrived in Chi Phat village on Thursday morning, enjoyed lunch with the community team and then headed out on motos to the burial jar site called Peang Boran, some 20kms north of the village. About fifteen of us made the trip through forest trails and grasslands to see these remarkable burial sites and a bat cave amongst the rocks and then returned to enjoy the warm waters at Teuk Vet waterfall. As I was enjoying a relaxing dip, the heavens turned black, opened and hit us with an incredible thunderstorm of incessant rain, thunder and lightning. We headed back to Chi Phat village but the track soon resembled a river and crossing one riverbed, we were up to our waists in fast flowing water. Not a ride for the fainthearted. Everything was soaked through including my camera, wallet and mobile phone, with the camera now refusing to work. The skies had cleared in time for dinner at the community center and an early night at the Sen Monorom guesthouse. Remarkably, in this small community, there are now fifteen guesthouses and many more homestays. We began with an early breakfast today before a relaxing boat trip and then lunch at the Picnic Resort, just off national highway 4. Kudos to the organizers of the fam trip, the Cambodia MSME project, for running a smooth show over the last four days and of course, it was nice to meet my fellow travel operators to compare notes and experiences.